Holocaust survivor helped found CESJDS
The founding teacher of the Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School was Masha Wolpe Cohen Baras, the sole Holocaust survivor of her family of Kovno, Lithuania (“Charles E. Smith celebrating 50 years of educating children,” WJW, Nov. 12). Her father Jacob and brother Elisha were transported and murdered at Dachau. Her mother, Sonia, sister Pnina and she were interned at Stutthof concentration camp.
Masha alone survived and made her way to a displaced persons camp in Italy.
Through the energetic kindness of an Army captain who interviewed her at the DP camp and who searched in the United States for her uncle — my father, Julius H. Wolpe, whom she had never met — they were united, though it took four years to obtain a U.S. visa to bring her here.
Masha, who had been educated at the Sorbonne in France, spoke 11 languages. Her first job in the United States was at the Library of Congress in foreign translation. But Masha had little interest. Her prime desire was to educate – Jewish children — the youngest Jewish children — to understand the glory that confronted them by being born Jews!
Masha was the founding teacher of the Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School — the first kindergarten. She agreed to undertake the first grade following, but that was all. She only wanted to embrace and teach the youngest children, which she did for more than a dozen years!
Masha passed away just weeks ago and is interred next to her uncle and aunt in the Adas Israel Cemetery.
Her daughter and husband and grandchildren and great-grandchildren complete her family in our community.
DONALD E. WOLPE
Washington
Candidates embrace left-leaning policies
It is literally breathtaking how any American, let alone Jewish American, could even consider voting for either Chris Van Hollen or Donna Edwards for senator in Maryland (“Van Hollen, Edwards talk Middle East,” WJW, Nov. 5). The Democratic Party is now the party of hard-core leftism. Leftism has nothing to do with American values. The left in America, in our Democratic Party, on our campuses, in our schools and media, fundamentally deplores, denigrates and despises Israel. To the left, Israel, just like America, is the white, rich, capitalist, racist, imperialist, colonizers.
As energetic embracers of leftism, Van Hollen and Edwards have appeased and supported some of the most vile and dangerous humans that have ever populated the earth — the mullahs who run Iran. These are the guys who want the infidels, all Americans, including legislators like the Democratic candidates for Senate, dead. These are the guys who are very serious about their threats to annihilate millions of people in the most decent of countries Israel. These are the guys who throw thousands of gay men off roofs.
These are the men responsible for the deaths of countless of our soldiers in Iraq. These are the barbarians that will soon have nuclear weapons.
By supporting the Iran nuclear deal, Van Hollen and Edwards have handed $150 billion to the leaders in Iran to support their regime and continue their demonic work.
Vote for them? You’ve got to be kidding.
HOWARD SACHS
Chevy Chase
How can you trust Iran?
I am 86 years old, a registered Democrat, a Holocaust survivor, spent nine months on the front line during the Korean War, and was promoted to staff sergeant, earned B.S. and M.A. degrees, and I am a retired international trade analyst of the International Trade Commission.
The Iranian nuclear deal undermines our interests in the Middle East and Africa, and poses an existential threat to Israel. Your policy of virtual disengagement from these two regions has created a vacuum that is increasingly filled by Iran, Russia, and various Islamist groups.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was correct for rebuking the members of the United Nation for endorsing the Iran deal, and for their deafening silence on Iran’s repeated threats to annihilate Israel (“Netanyahu’s silent treatment,” WJW, Oct. 8). Why didn’t you and your partners, especially Germany, not insist that Iran rescind its threat to destroy Israel and to stop undermining nations in the Middle East and Africa, before agreeing to sign the Iran deal?
Mr. President, how can you trust the Iranian government that is threatening to destroy a member state of the world community, whose leaders chanted “death to America” on the day the Iran deal was signed, have imprisoned Americans, and supplied roadside bombs and other lethal weapons that have killed and maimed thousands of American and allied soldiers and civilians during the Iraq and Afghan wars?
I pray to God that Israel has, or will have, the capability of preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons. Should Israel fail, and Iran carries out its threat to wipe out Israel, you as the primary force behind the Iran deal will be burdened with the legacy as the enabler of the destruction of the State of Israel, and for the second Holocaust in modern Jewish history.
RUBEN MOLLER
Wheaton
The writer sent this letter to President Barack Obama.
